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Journal of Contemporary History
DOI: 10.1177/0022009406058676
2006; 41; 95
Journal of Contemporary History
George Sanford
The Katyn Massacre and Polish-Soviet Relations, 1941-43
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George Sanford
The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet
Relations, 1941–43
On 5 March 1940 the Politburo, the leading committee of the Soviet
Communist Party, officially ratified a decision taken by Stalin a few days
earlier to execute about 15,000 Polish prisoners of war (PoWs). They had been
captured in what became the nazi-Soviet war of September 1939 against
Poland which had been jointly agreed in the secret annexe to the Molotov–
Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, named after their foreign ministers.
Around 4600 military officers were held in a camp called Kozelsk about 150
miles south-east of Smolensk, while another 3900 were detained at Starobelsk
in the eastern Ukraine. A further 6400, mainly border and prison guards and
police functionaries, were held at Ostashkov near Kalininin (now Tver). The
Ministry of the Interior (NKVD) documents, which have become available
since the fall of Soviet communism, confirm the truth, which was covered up
by the USSR and its supporters until 1990, that all bar 395 were executed in a
carefully planned three-pronged operation by that security police agency,
headed by Stalin’s close henchman Minister of the Interior Lavrentii Beria and
his deputy Vsievolod Merkulov.
During April–May 1940 the Starobelsk PoWs were taken by train in almost
daily convoys to be shot in the NKVD prison cellars in Kharkov and to be
buried in a forest park close to the city. Those from Ostashkov were similarly
transported to be shot in the NKVD prison cellars in Tver and buried in the
greatest secrecy at Mednoe, a small village about 20 miles distant. Those
transported from Kozelsk were, apparently, shot and buried in one fell swoop
in the Katyn forest 12 miles from Smolensk. The Germans occupied this region
following their June 1941 invasion of the USSR but Reich Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels chose his moment carefully to announce the dis-
covery of the Katyn bodies only in April 1943. Varied Red Cross and Polish
delegations as well as an International Medical Commission were then
allowed to document the findings of German forensic–medical exhumations
that the Poles had been shot in spring 1940 and that this was, therefore, obvi-
ously a Soviet crime. This truth was contested bitterly by the Soviets who, on
reoccupying the Katyn region, produced the report of a commission called
after Academician Nikolai Burdenko who chaired it in January 1944. This
I would like to express my gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for an award
under their Research Leave Scheme which enabled me to write my book on the 1940 Soviet
massacre during the 2003–04 academic session.
Journal of Contemporary History Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and
New Delhi, Vol 41(1), 95–111. ISSN 0022–0094.
DOI: 10.1177/0022009406058676
became the officially binding version for the Soviet bloc and its Western sym-
pathizers, that the Poles had been captured and shot by the Germans during
their advance in the autumn of 1941.
1
The Katyn revelations were designed by the nazis to complicate, if not split,
the alliance between the Western Powers and their junior Polish ally the
London government-in-exile, from their major wartime Soviet ally. In this they
were strenuously resisted by Britain and America who had an overriding inter-
est in maintaining the Soviet military effort. The fighting on the Eastern Front
eventually broke the nazi war machine, thus saving the lives of an enormous
number of Western soldiers. After 1943 the Western Allies sacrificed not only
the objective truth about Katyn but also their Polish wartime ally, although
whether they did so consciously or otherwise is highly controversial. After
Stalingrad in late 1942 Stalin not only began to impose his wishes regarding
Poland’s postwar frontiers but also did his utmost to destroy the London
Poles, eventually replacing them entirely with an alternative communist
leadership which took over and transformed Poland on his behalf at the end of
the second world war. Communist control then froze knowledge about the
1940 massacre to that which had been revealed at Katyn in 1943 so that it
colloquially came to symbolize the whole massacre. More informed specula-
tion about the Starobelsk–Kharkov part of the massacre only emerged with the
release of British documents under the Thirty Years’ Rule in the early 1970s,
while Ostashkov-Mednoe was wreathed in mystery until almost 1990.
The German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 ended the first phase of the
second world war, that of nazi-Soviet collaboration. Between the summer of
1941 and April 1943 there was a period of direct diplomatic relations between
the Polish government-in-exile in London and the Soviet Union. During that
time, the struggle for the truth about the fate of almost 15,000 missing Polish
PoWs captured by the USSR during its occupation of Eastern Poland in
September 1939 became a crucial feature of the wider aspects of the Polish
Question — the related issues of her postwar frontiers and the Soviet
Occupied Territories of West Belarus and West Ukraine, and of the character
and place of postwar Poland in Europe. The larger issues provided the back-
drop of British–American efforts to mediate a Polish–Soviet understanding.
Such hopes became increasingly unrealistic as Soviet military power and politi-
cal prospects strengthened after the tide turned at Stalingrad in late 1942. The
London Poles thus went from being a nuisance, endangering the Allied war
effort in 1941–43, to an inconvenient historical loser. Their dumping troubled
Western statesmen both morally and politically. The consequences affected the
origins and course of the Cold War, while the establishment of the truth about
what eventually transpired to be the spring 1940 massacre of Polish PoWs set
particular problems for the British Foreign Office.
96
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
1
For the classic examination of all these aspects which marked the limits of what could defi-
nitely be established before the appearance of the post-1990 Soviet documentation see J.K.
Zawodny, Death in the Forest. The story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (London 1971).
The ultimate pretext for the above Allied failure, triggered by the German
announcement of the discovery of the Katyn graves in April 1943, was the
culmination of a whole series of fundamental Polish–Soviet disagreements.
These concerned the control, size and provisioning of the Polish army formed
in the USSR and the capacity of the London Poles to seek out, organize and
bring relief to, both the deported civilian and the imprisoned military sections
of their community. The Soviet totalitarian framework and Stalin’s polono-
phobia resulted in the harassment and arrest of Polish officials and the large-
scale Polish evacuation through Persia in 1943. This was accompanied by
bitter Polish–Soviet disputes over the citizens and territory of West Belarus and
West Ukraine occupied by the Red Army in 1939. Stalin’s decision to lie
about, and cover up, the fate of what we now know to be the 14,700 officers
and policemen from the Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps massacred
by the NKVD in 1940 made it impossible for him to collaborate meaningfully
with the London Poles. But his long-term aim of controlling postwar Poland
excluded the sort of deal that was to be established with Benes’ Czechoslovak
government-in-exile with the much less compliant Poles. Stalin thus went
ahead with his preferred policy of building up a Soviet-controlled Polish army
in the USSR. This led later, when the Red Army entered Poland in 1944, to the
arrest and disarmament of Home Army (AK) officers, and the forced integra-
tion of rankers into the Soviet-organized army formally led by Zygmunt
Berling, a Starobelsk survivor who collaborated with the Soviets as the Red
Army advanced into Poland. The general consensus, that the Red Army had
over-stretched itself and was not militarily in a position to aid the 1944
Warsaw Uprising, is correct but misleading. Stalin clearly would not have
supported an insurrection which was implicitly aimed against Soviet control
even if he had been able to do so. Taking a wider view, however, the Western
Allies can be faulted for their failure to support London Polish attempts to
synchronize their ‘Tempest’ strategy with the Allied war effort from autumn
1943 onwards. The ultimate result was the complete, although probably
inevitable, marginalization of the London Poles and their eventual abandon-
ment by the Western Allies in 1945.
The documentary sources for the above story have long been available with
the opening of Western archives in the early 1970s and the earlier publication
of the Polish documents.
2
Only the fall of communism, however, has made it
possible to have a dispassionate and informed debate about both the morality
and effectiveness of the policy of Western concessions to the USSR during the
second world war. Moreover, the changed ethical and human rights values
after the end of the Cold War threw new light on the handling of various
aspects of the truth and the manipulation of public opinion regarding such
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
97
2
For the latter see Documents on Polish-Soviet Relations. Vol. 1, 1939–1943 (London 1961),
hereafter DPSR. Stanislaw Kot, Conversations with the Kremlin and Dispatches from Russia
(London 1963). I am familiar with their originals in the Sikorski Institute in London which over-
lap with the Hoover Institute’s ‘Eastern Archive’ (Berkeley, California), now available on micro-
film in the Archiwum Akt Nowych (Modern History Archives), hereafter AAN, in Warsaw.
wartime episodes as Katyn. It was not so much that the Soviet documents
which became available during the 1990s fundamentally altered prevailing
interpretations.
3
By documenting the hard realities they swept away the sur-
rounding myth, speculation and propaganda and made it possible to have a
reliably grounded discussion of the other factors. In addition, they produced a
massive amount of specific detail on the organization and implementation of
the Stalinist massacre of Polish PoWs by the NKVD.
4
I do not intend to cover
the whole of Polish–Soviet relations for 1941–43 here, but to follow through
the strand leading up to the Katyn revelations in order to indicate the histori-
cal and political background which formed the initial cast out of which the
protracted subsequent struggle for the truth about the 1940 massacre
developed. The maxim that historical truth is always the first victim of politics
is amply borne out by Katyn. Its interpretation was later to be determined by
the attribution of responsibilities for the Cold War during its varied phases
just as much as by evidence indicating either Soviet or German guilt.
Polish–Soviet relations went through a number of phases between 1941 and
1943.
5
There was a direct and inverse correlation between initial Soviet weak-
ness and Moscow’s readiness to re-establish collaboration with the Poles, if
only to mollify their new Western Allies. The prime minister of the London
government-in-exile and commander-in-chief of the Polish Forces Abroad
General W≠adys≠aw Sikorski made a broadcast on 23 June 1941 welcoming
the ending of the ‘Nazi-Soviet combination’ — the source of Poland’s ‘terrible
disaster’.
6
Sikorski, and his Foreign Minister Auguste Zaleski, informed inter-
locutors, such as the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and the Soviet
ambassador in London Ivan Maisky, of the London Polish view on con-
tentious issues. The government-in-exile argued that the USSR should accept
98
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
3
The key pre-1990 texts concerned with the crusade for establishing the truth about Katyn in
addition to Zawodny remain: Henri de Montfort, Le Massacre de Katyn (Paris 1966); Louis
FitzGibbon, Unpitied and Unknown. Katyn — Bologoye — Dergachi (London 1975). Allen Paul,
Katyn´. Stalin’s Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection (Annapolis, MD 1991) is a transi-
tional ‘bottom-up’ study. Gerd Kaiser, Katyn. Das Staatsverbrechen — das Staatsgeheimnis
(Berlin 2002) reproduces the new material. The best documented contemporary Polish examina-
tion is Stanis≠aw Jaczyn´ski, Zag≠ada oficerów wojska polskiego na wschodzie, wrzesien´ 1939 —
maj 1940 (Warsaw 2000).
4
I have examined the subject in Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940. Truth, Justice and
Memory (London 2005) to which the reader is referred for the full discussion. As a result of exten-
sive Polish–Russian archival co-operation in the early 1990s a great number of Russian documents
were photocopied and transferred to the Central Military Archive in Warsaw. The key documents
concerning the 1940 massacre have been published in Katyn´. Dokumenty Zbrodni (Warsaw, 3
vols 1995 –2001), hereafter KDZ.
5
The official version of the British role in Soviet–Polish relations in this period is covered with
what I would call pudic reticence by Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second
World War, vol. 2 (London 1971). In other words, he barely hints at the embarrassing dilemma
facing the British in their refusal to question Stalin’s cover-up of Katyn publicly or to oppose his
policy on Poland’s revised postwar frontiers and of forcing an alternative communist élite on its
country in place of the London Poles at its end.
6
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 86.
that the annulment of the August 1939 Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact as well as of
all subsequent anti-Polish German–Soviet agreements signified a return to the
legal and actual status quo concerning Poland’s Riga Eastern Frontier and
the Soviet Occupied Eastern Territories.
7
The Soviets rejected this, favouring
‘the independence of the Polish state within the limits of Polish nationality’.
8
Both sides maintained their respective standpoints in the ambiguous agree-
ment of 21 July 1941 re-establishing diplomatic relations. The Soviet govern-
ment recognized ‘the treaties concerning territorial changes in Poland which
were concluded by the USSR since July 1939 as invalid’. It agreed to the estab-
lishment of a Polish army under Polish command in the USSR but ‘under the
direction’ of Soviet military authorities.
9
Sikorski showed excessive goodwill
by hailing the agreement as regulating ‘disputes which have mutually divided
us for centuries’ and as heralding ‘a new era in Polish–Russian relations’.
10
The
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet tersely amnestied ‘all Polish citizens deprived
of their freedom on the territory of the USSR’ on 12 August.
11
The same day
the VKP(b) (Communist Party) Politburo laid down the details of their release.
Provisional identity documents were to be issued. Those who opted for Polish
nationality would register with the Polish embassy and receive Polish pass-
ports and material support; the envisaged Polish army would be divided into
units of 12,000 in Buzuluk, Saratov and Kamshyn.
12
The Polish government-in-exile maintained principles of full sovereignty
and operational control over its forces fighting under Allied and British
Command in the Anglo-Polish Military Agreement of 5 August 1940.
13
It
thought that it had protected the same principles in the Military Agreement of
14 August 1941 with the USSR.
14
The different story of the establishment of
the Polish army in the USSR and the Polish–Soviet–British exchanges regard-
ing their political relationship can be followed in detail elsewhere.
15
What is
highlighted here are the growing complications caused by the issue of what
was termed the ‘missing officers’. Natalia Lebedeva, the Russian historian
whose archival investigations were important in forcing Gorbachev to accept
Soviet responsibility for the 1940 massacre in 1990, argues that the refusal
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
99
7
Ibid., nos 89, 90, 91.
8
Maisky conversation with Sikorski and Zaleski, 11 July 1941, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 94.
9
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 105.
10
Ibid., no. 109.
11
Ibid., no. 110.
12
Wojciech Materski (ed.), Z archiwów sowieckich. Vol. I, Polscy jen´cy wojenni w ZSRR,
1939–1941 (Warsaw 1992), 76–82.
13
Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, DC 1956–63), hereafter FRUS, 1941,1,
217–18.
14
KDZ, vol. 3, no. 198.
15
Anita Prazmowska, Britain and Poland, 1939–1943. The Betrayed Ally (Cambridge 1995);
John Coutouvidis and Jaime Reynolds, Poland, 1939–1947 (Leicester 1986); George Kacewitch,
Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the Polish Government in Exile (1939–1945) (The Hague
1979); Jan Karski, The Great Powers and Poland, 1919–1939 (Lanham, MD 1985); Edward
Raczynski, In Allied London (London 1962).
of the Soviet authorities to give a satisfactory answer regarding the missing
officers complicated Soviet–Polish relations and undermined trust in the Soviet
leaders.
16
The London government accepted the official Soviet figures of over
9000 army officers and 181,200 soldiers detained in the USSR. It rejected the
claim by the Soviet ambassador in London Ivan Maisky that only 20,000
Polish PoWs were held on Soviet territory by the summer of 1941. Stanis≠aw
Kot, the newly-appointed Polish ambassador to Moscow, was instructed to
work for the rapid release of all Poles held in Soviet prisons and camps as well
as to protect all Polish civilians throughout the USSR by establishing a net-
work of consulates.
17
The Polish Military Mission in the USSR, headed by Lieutenant-General
W≠adys≠aw Anders, soon became aware that few of the estimated 9400 or so
officers could be traced. There was little information on the PoWs held in the
Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps after the spring of 1940. Anders’s
staff prodded the 395 survivors who had been transported to the Gryazovets
camp and produced a list which eventually grew to 10,000 of those who had
been detained at Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov. Count (Major) Józef
Czapski, who had survived Starobelsk because of his aristocratic connections,
was given the job of co-ordinating these activities and of seeking out the miss-
ing officers. He made no progress with NKVD General Leonid F. Reikhman.
18
The Soviet documents made available in the 1990s throw definitive light on
how Stalin’s establishment viewed the statistical parameters of the question.
The note of 28 June 1941 of the Head of the NKVD Main Department for
Prisoner of War Affairs (DPA), Petr Soprunenko, started off with an initial
October 1939 figure of 130,242 PoWS from the former Polish army and
internees in the Baltic States held in Soviet captivity. Of these, 42,400 were
released to West Ukraine and West Belarus, 43,042 were exchanged with the
Germans, 14,587 were liquidated, euphemistically ‘handed over to the disposal
of the NKVD in April–May 1940’, and 2758 were arrested, sentenced, or had
died or escaped, while a total of 27,455 still remained in NKVD camps.
19
Of the
latter category 7692 were held in Siberian labour camps (Gulags), and 14,104
in a complex of camps around Lv’iv and smaller numbers in other camps.
20
The
hurried and badly-organized evacuation of Polish PoWs from German-
occupied areas during the summer 1941 invasion, however, resulted in the
NKVD’s shooting around 2000 of the Lv’iv evacuees rather than allowing
them to escape or fall into German hands.
21
By the end of July 1941 the NKVD
100
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
16
Natalia Lebiediewa, ‘60 lat fa≠szowania i zatajania historii zbrodni Katyn´skiej’ in Marek
Tarczyn´ski (ed.), Zbrodnia Katyn´ska po 60 latach (Warsaw 2000), 105.
17
General Instructions for the Polish Ambassador in the USSR, 28 August 1941, DPSR, vol. 1,
158.
18
Zbrodnia katyn´ska w s´wietle dokumentów (London 12 edns 1948–89), 74–6; Józef Czapski,
Na nieludzkiej ziemi (London 1969), 141–5.
19
KDZ, vol. 3, no. 381.
20
Ibid., no. 175.
21
Ibid., no. 194, 421–2.
had concentrated the bulk of Polish soldiers in two camps in which it still held
2 generals, 8 colonels, 25 lieutenant colonels, 47 majors, 154 captains and 205
lieutenants who had somehow survived the 1940 massacre.
22
By early
September, 24,828 had been released into the ranks of the Polish army while
762 remained in the camps.
23
Kot only received a confused and embarrassed reaction to the question:
‘What happened to 7500 officers?’, which he raised directly with deputy
Foreign Minister Andrei Vyshinsky for the first time on 7 October 1941.
24
Vyshinsky was better prepared the second time on 14 October, when he cited
the figures of 387,932 Polish citizens confined in the USSR, 71,481 in prisons
(sentenced or under investigation), 291,137 deported (in four great waves
during 1939–40) or held in special settlements, and 25,314 detained as PoWs.
By 1 October 345,511 had been released leaving only 42,421 still detained.
25
Kot bluntly refused to accept the accuracy of these figures as most of the 9400
officers held in the USSR had not been accounted for. The Polish record states
that ‘the discussion became loaded with irritation’.
26
The Soviet line firmed up
subsequently, maintaining that all the Polish officers had been released; if by
some oversight some individuals had not been freed, they soon would be.
27
Vyshinsky continued to stonewall during further exchanges, arguing that this
‘problem does not exist at all’ as it was only a matter of discovering the where-
abouts of the officers.
28
After these preliminary skirmishes Kot met Stalin for the first time in the
Kremlin on 14 November. Their exchanges form an important staple of
the Katyn literature.
29
Stalin expressed a magnanimous view of the historical
conflict between Poland and Russia, claiming that he wanted bygones to be
bygones. Regarding current controversies, he felt that the number of 30,000
men, set as a limit on the Polish army by their military agreement, was as much
as the USSR could feed and supply, although a larger Polish contribution
would be possible if the Western Allies supported it. The charade played out
by him and Prime Minister Viachyslav Molotov when Kot asked for the
release of all Polish soldiers according to the Supreme Soviet amnesty and
pointed out that not a single officer had returned from Starobelsk is well
known. Pressed directly by Kot on the obvious existence of detailed lists of the
missing officers from the three camps — the Poles had learnt by now that each
officer had been interrogated individually — Stalin phoned, or pretended to
phone, the NKVD to ask them whether all the Poles had been released!
30
Stalin
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
101
22
Soprunenko notes of 30–31 July 1941, KDZ, vol. 3, nos 190, 191.
23
Sopruneko to Merkulov, 12 September 1941, KDZ, vol. 3, no. 202.
24
DPSR, vol. 1, 173–4. KDZ, vol. 3, no. 208.
25
For Beria’s more accurate figures of 1 October 1942, KDZ, vol. 3, no. 207.
26
Kot–Vyshinsky conversation, 14 October 1941, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 130.
27
Kot, Conversations with the Kremlin, op. cit., 105.
28
KDZ, vol. 3, no. 209.
29
Ibid., no. 149; Kot, op. cit., 106–16.
30
The Soviet record, which otherwise corresponds fairly closely to the Polish one, contains no
mention of this particular episode, KDZ, vol. 3, no. 212.
then diverted the conversation to the question of where, and when, the Poles
wanted to fight the Germans.
Kot informed Sikorski and Zaleski, rather optimistically, that Stalin
accepted the unconditional character of the amnesty and seemed irritated by
the failure of his subordinates to keep him fully informed on the prisoner
releases.
31
Significantly, nothing meaningful was said about the latter the
following day when Kot and Molotov prepared the ground for Sikorski’s visit
to Moscow.
32
The Polish request to establish consulates was rejected in favour
of temporary delegates to specific areas for agreed tasks. An exchange of
diplomatic notes only confirmed the Soviet hard-line big lie that ‘the amnesty
of the Polish citizens has been fully executed’ apart from criminals.
33
The
Polish reply of 3 December denied that this was so, requested a list of those
detained and protested against the Soviets’ application of ethnic exemptions to
the 1939 decree and their interpretation of Polish community relief as anti-
Soviet activity.
34
Despite Anglo-American hopes and Sikorski’s best intentions, his visit to
Moscow of 3–4 December failed to resolve Polish–Soviet difficulties and to
establish a constructive basis for their relationship. At their Kremlin meeting
on 3 December, in the presence of Molotov, General Anders and Kot, Stalin
nodded at Sikorski’s declaration that he was committed to establishing
Polish–Soviet friendship but that this depended on the resolution of their
current difficulties.
35
Knowing the truth about the 1940 massacre, he could
hardly have felt comfortable at having to listen to Sikorski telling him to his
face that his (Stalin’s) declaration on the implementation of the amnesty was
not being fulfilled. A large number of Poles were still held in labour camps and
prisons. Stalin retorted in a famous exchange in the literature which main-
tained the lie that this was ‘impossible’ as ‘all the Poles had been released’.
Sikorski gave Stalin a way out by suggesting that lower-level authorities were
not carrying out orders. Camp commanders had complete lists of prisoners
released and detained. Sikorski handed over an incomplete list of 4000
detained Poles: ‘Not one of them has returned.’ Stalin replied, ‘That is impos-
sible, they have escaped.’ In reply to Anders’ question where they could have
escaped to, Stalin came out with the oft-repeated classic line, ‘Well, to
Manchuria’. The laconic dictator, unused to being interrogated and corrected,
diverted the conversation onto the firmer ground of the location and employ-
ment of the liberated Polish civilian population as well as the terms and condi-
tions of their military collaboration. This included Sikorski’s proposal that the
Poles be allowed to regroup in Persia.
36
Although the tone at the subsequent banquet was friendly enough, nothing
102
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
31
Kot, op. cit., 116.
32
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 151.
33
Ibid., nos 150, 153.
34
DPSR, vol. 1, 230.
35
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 159; Kot, op. cit., 140–55; KDZ, vol. 3, 499–509.
36
FRUS, 1942, vol. III, 100–4.
of substance was resolved in their Declaration of Friendship and Mutual
Assistance signed on 4 December.
37
The two parties merely committed them-
selves to fighting the war to a favourable conclusion. All the contentious issues
concerning postwar frontiers, the treatment of Poles within the USSR and
the organization of the Polish forces were left unresolved. The hopelessly
optimistic Sikorski left believing that the size of the Polish army would only be
limited by the number of Poles fit for military service in the USSR and that the
Poles would be freely allowed to organize it and their delegates to succour
the civilian Poles.
38
He envisaged such a 150,000-strong force as strengthening
the Polish–Soviet relationship within the Great Power alliance.
39
The basic
premise of Sikorski’s policy that the Western Allies would support Poland’s
postwar security and frontiers in exchange for her contribution to the war
effort was, however, to prove mistaken.
40
Churchill’s promise that the Anglo-
American allies ‘would not allow Poland to be harmed’ and that ‘a powerful
and independent Polish state’ would be restored only seemed possible for a
short while.
41
Such hopes were to be squashed by Stalin without overmuch
Western opposition, but his ambiguous and skilful tactical manoeuvring
encouraged Western self-delusions on that score for long after Stalingrad. His
more co-operative immediate tack was also maintained following Sikorski’s
Moscow visit. The Soviet State Defence Committee resolved on 25 December
1941 that the size of the Polish army in the USSR should be set at 96,000,
grouped in six divisions.
42
The folder handed over by the archivists of President Yeltsin’s newly demo-
cratic Russian Republic to the Director of the Polish Main Archives in
November 1992 contained Soviet documents concerning the organization of
the Polish army in the USSR during 1941–42.
43
Beria’s note of 30 October
1941 for Stalin revealed that the number of Polish military in the USSR was
40,961 (1985 officers, 11,919 sub-officers and 27,077 ordinary ranks), orga-
nized in two infantry divisions, a reserve regiment and an army staff of 508.
44
Beria, at that time, considered that its commanders, Generals W≠adys≠aw
Anders, Mieczys≠aw Boruta-Spiechowicz and Micha≠ Tokarzewski, as well as
Colonels Leopold Okulicki, Zygmunt Berling and Janusz Ga≠adyk, were col-
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
103
37
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 161.
38
Sikorski to Churchill, 17 December 1941, DPSR, vol. 1.
39
For studies of Sikorski during the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) see Walentyna Korpalska,
W≠adys≠aw Eugeniusz Sikorski. Biografia polityczna (Wroc≠aw 1981); Olgierd Terlecki, Genera≠
Sikorski (Kraków, 2 vols, 1981–3); Roman Wapin´ski, Genera≠ Sikorski (Warsaw 1978).
40
Sikorski’s report of 12 January 1942 to the Council of Ministers, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 171. For
favourable studies of Sikorski’s pro-British and Federalist wartime aims by personal and minis-
terial associates, Marian Kukiel, Genera≠ W≠adys≠aw Sikorski — z
.
o≠nierz i ma≈z
.
stanu Polski
Walcza≈cej (London 1970); Karol Popiel, Genera≠ Sikorski w mojej pamie≈ci (London 1987).
41
Sikorski–Churchill conversation of 31 January 1942, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 179.
42
KDZ, vol. 3, no. 223; Wojciech Materski (ed.), Armia Polska w ZSSR, 1941–1942 (Warsaw
1992), 41–5.
43
Materski (ed.), Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit.
44
Ibid., 19–31; Materski (ed.), Polscy jen´cy wojenni w ZSSR, op. cit., 95.
laborating loyally. He accepted that, although they were very pro-British, they
were attempting to dampen down the bitter anti-Soviet sentiments of camp
survivors like General Jerzy Wo≠kowicki.
45
The question arises whether there was a real possibility, during the period of
maximum Soviet weakness between the German invasion in June 1941 and
Stalingrad, for Polish–Soviet relations to be re-established on the genuine
collaborative basis desired by Sikorski and the Western Allies. If there was, the
Poles might have been treated in the same way as the Czechoslovaks, were it
not for the dilemma which Stalin faced as a result of massacring the Polish
officers in 1940. A dictator like Stalin could not afford to reveal his crimes,
mistakes and lies publicly, and, even less, to allies. Stalin played for time and
just survived in 1941. He profited, subsequently, in 1942–43, from the
increasing leverage provided by the Red Army’s contribution to the Allied war
effort. He thus diminished the standing of the London Poles and their forces
in the wartime alliance by making tactical concessions such as their partial
evacuation through Persia. By the time Katyn was revealed by the Germans it
was barely an annoying pinprick to Stalin. By forcing the Western Allies to
accept his version he prepared the ground for gaining their commitment to
fight the war through to Germany’s unconditional surrender and allied occu-
pation and to Great Power determination of the postwar settlement. The
London Poles had been excluded from having any say over the Polish army in
the USSR or over Stalin’s political forces, which were to return to Poland and
to establish communism in the Red Army’s baggage train. Was any other
outcome possible? Only if the 1940 massacre had not occurred, fuelling
Stalin’s need to establish and maintain the big lie on the issue. The situation
would also have taken a different turn if military stalemate had continued on
the Eastern Front, increasing the need for Polish manpower and giving the
British greater leverage in Moscow. The most tantalizing question, however, is
what would have happened if the Western Allies had tested Stalin by rendering
Sikorski real, as against largely verbal, support.
Increasingly bitter Polish–Soviet recriminations about the missing officers
continued throughout 1942 against the backdrop of wider events and issues
and ongoing controversies over frontiers and territories. A Polish note of 28
January 1942 raised ‘the sad fact’ that over 8000 officers and all those from
the Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps had not been liberated and
were, probably, still held in labour camps in Nova Zemlia, Yakutsk or on the
Kolyma river.
46
It received the, by now, stock Soviet reply that all the officers
had been released in accordance with the August 1941 amnesty.
47
Czapski also
lobbied the American embassy in Moscow about the missing PoWs.
48
104
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
45
Materski (ed.), Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit., 37–9.
46
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 177; Raczyn´ski note 49/Sow/42 of 28 January 1942, Hoover Institution,
Eastern Archive, hereafter HIEA AAN.
47
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 192; Bogolomov note MC57 of 13 March 1942, HIEA AAN.
48
FRUS, 1942, vol. III, 104–5, 150–1, 155.
As of 1 March 1942, the Polish army was 60,000 strong (3090 officers of
uncertain and varied provenance, 16,202 sub-officers and 40,708 rankers).
49
Beria reported to Stalin that there was a wide range of views within the officer
corps ranging from loyal collaboration in the Sikorski group to extreme
nationalist and authoritarian views which regarded the Soviet alliance in
purely tactical terms. Anders had called on his commanders to stop gossiping
‘about all our grievances and experiences’ and to check what could be con-
strued as anti-Soviet agitation. Anders raised the issue of the missing officers
from the three camps in his conversation with Stalin on 18 March 1941 con-
cerning the limitation of Polish rations and the subsequent evacuation to
Persia which started in the spring of 1942.
50
Stalin suggested that they might
have fallen into German hands.
51
He blamed the Allied shortfall in wheat
deliveries for the cut in Polish rations. Stalin, therefore, agreed that the best
outcome was the proposed Polish withdrawal and regrouping in Persia.
52
What
was at stake was that Anders, influenced by his experience of the Lubianka
prison during 1939–41, refused to commit the Poles to battle unless the
Soviets provided firm guarantees regarding their supply and independence and
allowed the London Poles to benefit politically from their military participa-
tion.
53
Stalin wished to limit their influence and had already decided to replace
them with his own wholly controlled formation. All this scuppered Sikorski’s
plans for good. His mouthpiece in Moscow ambassador Kot could only
express the forlorn hope that ‘the maximum participation of the Polish army
and the shared spilt blood in the struggle against the Germans on Soviet soil
would bind both nations closely together and bring about the best possible
result for future relations’.
54
The departure of the main body of Polish soldiers for Persia, however, freed
Stalin from any remaining allied constraints. It also allowed Anders, who was
sceptical of the attempts by Sikorski and the British to achieve Polish–Soviet
military collaboration and political understanding, to claim credit for having
saved substantial numbers of his compatriots from ‘the Inhuman Land’. In the
first evacuation to Persia, between late March and early April 1942, 42,254
Poles — 30,099 soldiers and 12,155 civilians — left the USSR.
55
In the second
evacuation completed at the end of August 1942, 69,917 Poles left — 41,103
soldiers and 28,814 civilians.
56
The Soviet figures, therefore, claim that
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
105
49
Beria to Stalin, 14 March 1942, KDZ, vol. 3, no. 230.
50
Beria’s preparatory note for Stalin’s meeting with Anders accepted that the 44,000 rations
would not cover even the 60,000 soldiers already enrolled in the Polish army in the USSR,
Materski (ed.), Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit., 49–73.
51
DPSR, vol. 1, 307.
52
Molotov to ambassador in London, Bogomolov, 21 March 1942, Armia Polska w ZSSR, op.
cit., 79–80.
53
Cf. Polityka (Warsaw), 1992, no. 40, 13.
54
Vyshinsky conversation with Kot, 24 March 1942, Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit., 85.
55
Beria to Stalin, 4 April 1942, KDZ, vol. 3, 542. Also in Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit., 91.
56
Cipher telegram by Soviet Consul in Pahlevi (Mikhail Koptelov), 5 September 1942, KDZ,
vol. 3, no. 240. Also Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit., 107.
112,171 Poles left the USSR, of whom 71,202 were military and 40,969 civil-
ians. The Soviets had originally opposed the withdrawal of Polish civilians
under cover of the military evacuation but found it practical to turn a blind
eye. They were also aware of the Polish splits between Sikorski’s supporters
and the strongly anti-Soviet General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, who had been a
leading figure in the interwar regime dominated by Marshal Józef Pi≠sudski
from 1926 till his death in 1935. An opponent of the withdrawal Colonel
Okulicki expressed the fear that the Poles would end up as ‘colonial troops’
for the English, as indeed they did.
57
Relations then deteriorated rapidly with increasing Soviet arrests and
harassment of Polish community relief officials in the USSR. Direct investiga-
tion by the Poles within the USSR of the missing officers became impossible
and was treated as espionage. The citizenship and frontier issues flared up
repeatedly. By July, arrested embassy officials and delegates were accused offi-
cially of ‘anti-Soviet activities and intelligence work’.
58
A Polish note of 27
August 1942 stated that ‘the negative attitude of the Soviet Government to the
further development of the Polish forces’ was demonstrated by its failure to
provide information about the missing 8000 Polish officers.
59
Continuing Soviet arrests of embassy officials and of their ‘men of trust’ and
the Soviet seizure of the Kuibyshev embassy archives led Sikorski to a pessi-
mistic appraisal of Polish–Soviet relations towards the end of 1942 by defend-
ing the Polish government against the charge that it was to blame for the
evacuation to Persia. He promised friendly co-existence with Soviet Russia and
co-operation against the Germans but found it increasingly difficult to defend
Poland’s independence and his government’s freedom of political decision.
60
Kot had not been a career diplomat. Much was made at the time, and later,
about his alleged indiscretions, especially by Sikorski’s hardline opponents and
supercilious British Foreign Office functionaries. Given the context of worsen-
ing Polish–Soviet conflicts, the brick wall faced by the Poles over the missing
officers and the Allied priority of maintaining the Soviet war effort against
nazi Germany, his performance, as well as that of Sikorski’s government-in
exile, can now be viewed with greater understanding.
61
When Kot left in July
to become Minister of Information in London, his successor Tadeusz Romer
faced an even more thankless task. The Soviets ratcheted up the pressure and
the Poles’ lack of political and military muscle became fully apparent.
Molotov, at his most pedantically legalistic, brought the full weight of
Soviet power to bear upon Romer on 20 February 1943.
62
What Romer
described as ‘a historic moment’ of crisis in Polish–Soviet relations was pre-
106
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
57
Beria to Stalin, 24 July 1942, Armia Polska w ZSSR, op. cit., 95.
58
Vyshinsky to chargé d’affaires Sokolnicki, 20 July 1942, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 251.
59
DPSR, vol. 1, 426.
60
Ibid., no. 277.
61
Cf. Piotr Z
.
aron´, Kierunek wschodni w strategii wojskowo-politycznej gen. W≠adys≠awa
Sikorskiego, 1940–1943 (Warsaw 1988).
62
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 291.
cipitated by the Soviet note of 16 January 1943 asserting the Soviet claim to
sovereignty over what the Poles regarded as the Occupied Eastern Territories.
All inhabitants of West Belarus and West Ukraine (resident as of 1–2
November 1939) had been accorded Soviet citizenship by the Supreme Soviet
decree of 29 November 1939, within the framework of the Soviet Citizenship
Law of 19 August 1939.
63
‘By way of exception’, the Soviets had been pre-
pared to regard ethnic Poles resident there as Polish citizens. But their declara-
tion of 1 December 1941 stated that this could ‘ in no case serve as the basis of
the analogous recognition as Polish citizens’ of the Ukrainian, Belarusan and
Jewish nationalities, as ‘the question of a Polish–Soviet frontier is not yet
settled and is liable to discussion in the future’.
64
Molotov blamed the crisis
entirely on the Poles for failing to respond to Soviet goodwill regarding the
exception.
Romer saw Stalin on the night of 26–27 February. Extensive discussion
merely clarified conflicting viewpoints on the issues of citizenship, territory
and propaganda.
65
The Soviet news agency TASS attacked the London Poles
on 1 March for their imperialist refusal to accept Belarusan and Ukrainian
rights to reunite with their constituent Soviet republics. The Poles responded
with protests against the Soviet execution of two well-known Jewish Bund
(interwar socialist trade union) activists Viktor Alter and Henryk Ehrlich, the
arrest of Polish relief delegates and the Soviet refusal to allow Polish orphans
to leave the USSR. They also lobbied the British and Americans on their rights
and claims to the Eastern Territories. The Soviets, however, revealed their
hand in March 1943 by transforming their group of pro-Moscow Poles
resident in the USSR into the Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP), under the chair-
manship of the writer Wanda Wasilewska. Stalin also began to organize the
entirely Moscow-controlled Kos´ciuszko division in the USSR.
Stalin had, therefore, by April 1943 excluded the London Poles from having
any say over developments within the USSR, including the fate of the citizens
of West Belarus and West Ukraine. He now used the government-in-exile’s
reaction to the Katyn revelations as the pretext for breaking off diplomatic
relations to marginalize it even further by forcing the British and Americans to
take the Soviet side unconditionally against the London Poles.
This deterioration in Polish–Soviet relations during 1942 meant that the
consequences of the discovery of the Katyn bodies should not have surprised
Western élites. Public opinion, kept in the dark about the earlier problems,
regarded Katyn as a thunderbolt out of a blue sky, particularly as the British
censored Polish attempts to present their viewpoint. The form of the Germans’
announcement and their utilization of the discovery of the Katyn section of the
1940 massacre also complicated the historical truth enormously. Although the
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
107
63
Ibid., no. 285.
64
Ibid., no. 157.
65
Ibid., no. 295. Romer failed to gain any concessions in subsequent discussions with Molotov
during March, DPSR, vol. 1, nos 299, 300.
German High Command had received reports of Polish bodies in the forest
much earlier, the timing of the announcement seems to have been decided by
Goebbels’ judgment of the best moment for his proposed propaganda coup.
On the morning of 13 April 1943, Radio Berlin announced that the German
occupying authorities had discovered a Soviet execution site at Katyn in the
Kozie Gory hills west of Smolensk. The Poles had been killed by revolver shots
to the back of the neck and buried in their military uniforms, while the docu-
mentation left on them by the Soviets meant that their identification would be
possible.
66
The Germans presumed that all 10,000 missing officers had been
murdered there. Goebbels’ subsequent propaganda use of the increased figure
of 11–12,000 was, as we now know, mistaken, although self-serving. The
Germans’ aim was to divert attention from their planned liquidation of the
Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw in the second half of April, although their primary
objective was to split the Poles and the Western Allies from the Soviets.
67
The discovery, and particularly its German auspices, confronted the govern-
ment-in-exile with an impossible dilemma. Total capitulation to Stalin was
ruled out, not only because it (the government-in-exile) contained strongly
nationalist supporters of Poland’s interwar Pi≠sudski regime. Sikorski’s
followers and the members of leftist peasant and socialist parties, as good
Polish patriots, also could not swallow at face value the immediate Soviet cover
story that the Germans were responsible, as they had captured and murdered
the Polish PoWs in late summer 1941 after the Soviet withdrawal from the
relevant part of the Smolensk region.
68
The Polish leaders were also aware of
the understandable sensitivities of the Polish troops in the Middle East fighting
for the British in North Africa, particularly those who had escaped from the
USSR.
The Polish cabinet made a start at tackling the issue on 15 April by setting
out what it regarded as the definite facts.
69
The Soviets had admitted capturing
about 10,000 Polish officers. The Poles’ excellent intelligence sources within
the USSR confirmed that between 60 and 300 PoWs had been removed,
almost every day, from the Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps between
5 April and mid-May 1940. The ones from Kozelsk were transported towards
Smolensk, while 400 were transported to the Gryazovets camp in Vologda
district. Repeated Polish efforts during 1941–42 to elicit information from the
Soviet authorities regarding the 15,000 Poles held in the three camps had all
proved fruitless. The Polish government had, consequently, decided to request
the International Red Cross, as the most competent international body, to
send a delegation to Katyn to investigate the mass graves and to verify the
facts. Their view was that the news was so shocking that ‘only irrefutable facts
108
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
66
DPSR, vol. 1, no. 305.
67
Cf. Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, 1939–1945, vol. II, czerwiec 1941–kwiecien´ 1945
(London 1973), 500.
68
Soviet Information Bureau communiqué of 15 April 1940, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 306.
69
Minister of National Defence communiqué, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 307.
can outweigh the numerous and detailed German statements concerning the
discovery of the bodies.’
70
The Polish government’s denunciation of German crimes against the Polish
nation and denial that the nazis had any moral right to speak on their behalf
was to be shrugged off contemptuously by the Soviets.
71
The Poles had stressed
that they were acting completely independently of the Germans. They were
extremely unfortunate in that the Germans also asked the Red Cross to inves-
tigate at exactly the same time which allowed the Soviets to depict these
wholly independent moves as being part of a co-ordinated conspiracy.
72
Pravda on 19 April 1943 attacked ‘Hitler’s Polish collaborators’. Stalin’s
reaction was rapid and ruthless as he could not afford to admit that one of his
crimes had come to light. Churchill and Roosevelt accepted Stalin’s resultant
bluster that he was the aggrieved party. Whether they did so in good faith or
for the good of their allied warfighting strategy can be debated. The result was
that the Poles were blamed and traduced, both then and subsequently.
73
Following the maxim that the best defence is always attack, Stalin savaged
the London Poles. They had supported ‘infamous fascist slander against the
USSR’ and colluded with the ‘farcical investigation’ designed to cover up the
nazis’ own ‘monstrous crime against the Polish officers’.
74
The ambiguous
description of the breaking-off of relations as an ‘interruption’, however,
fed forlorn British hopes for months that they might be resumed. Churchill
supported Stalin’s opposition to the Red Cross investigation and accepted his
argument that it was bound to be fraudulent as it would take place under
German control.
75
Eden prevailed upon Sikorski on 24 April to withdraw the
request for the Red Cross investigation.
76
Churchill’s appeal to Stalin, how-
ever, failed to prevent Molotov from breaking off relations officially on 25
April.
77
Molotov’s note argued that the Poles had used ‘the slanderous Hitlerite
fake’ as an attempt to gain territorial concessions at the expense of Soviet
Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. The Foreign Office was made fully aware
of the London Polish view that the Soviets had purposely exacerbated their
mutual relations and rejected all Polish overtures brutally and high-handedly
following the 1941 Polish–Soviet agreement. Katyn seems ‘to have but
changed the timetable for a rupture towards which the Kremlin had been
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
109
70
Minister Raczyn´ski to Soviet ambassador in London, Bogomolov, 20 April 1943, DPSR, vol.
1, no. 309.
71
Polish government statement of 17 April 1943 concerning the discovery of the graves of the
Polish officers near Smolensk, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 308.
72
Alexandra Kwiatkowska-Viatteau, 1940–1943, Katyn. L’Armée Polonaise assassinée
(Brussels 1982), 22–3.
73
DPSR, vol. 1, nos 314, 319.
74
Stalin telegram to Churchill, 21 April 1943, PRO FO371/34569 C484569/258/55; DPSR,
vol. 1, no. 310.
75
Churchill to Stalin, 24 April 1943, DPSR, vol. 1, no. 312.
76
PRO FO371/34570 C4668/258/55.
77
Cf. DPSR, vol. 1, nos 313, 315, 316, 318.
heading for 16 months’.
78
But this was not the main factor in play. The liberal
moralism of the British élites made it psychologically impossible, quite apart
from their definition of the national interest, for them to accept, at least
publicly, that their Soviet ally was a mass murderer. They, therefore, had to
reject what would normally have been accepted as overwhelming evidence of
proof of Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre. They continued to do so for over
four decades until the fall of communism, by undermining key aspects of the
case against the Soviets in order to justify what the Foreign Office called the
suspension of judgment line.
79
The historical interpretation of this crucial episode in Polish–Soviet relations
naturally varied subsequently, according to political circumstances.
80
From
1943 until the onset of the Cold War the London Poles were like Banquo’s
ghost haunting the uneasy conscience of the Allies until the realities of the
postwar Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe became apparent. The immediate
reaction to the Stalinist period of the Cold War was to swing excessively the
other way, especially in America with McCarthyism and the year-long
Congressional Committee investigation into Katyn in 1952.
81
Détente, how-
ever, favoured revisionist interpretations. The influential leftist American
historian Gabriel Kolko, for example, submerged the truth about specific
episodes, such as Katyn, in a wider doctrine of the historical inevitability of the
postwar division of Europe and subsequent Cold War.
82
Kolko conceded
Soviet guilt over Katyn as the Stalinists wanted to destroy the alternative
Polish ruling class. He accepted that the Soviet–London Polish break over
Katyn merely confirmed a longer-standing rupture reaching back to the
Polish–Soviet War of 1920. But Kolko also blamed the London Poles for
counting on firm Anglo-American support and thus failing to make whatever
deal was possible with Stalin.
83
Kolko’s conclusion that ‘without Katyn noth-
ing would have been different in Polish–Soviet relations’ is fundamentally
wrong, although it is little comfort that ‘Katyn was the exception rather than
the rule’ in Soviet second world war practices.
84
110
Journal of Contemporary History Vol 41 No 1
78
Raczyn´ski to William Strang, 8 October 1943, HIEA AAN.
79
This aspect is covered in detail in chapters six and seven of my study. It came out into the
open with the PRO’s release in the early 1970s of the two major reports by Sir Owen O’Malley,
ambassador to the London government-in-exile. This debate, including a subsequent controversy
over the erection of a Katyn Memorial in London, was publicized at the time in a series of publi-
cations by Louis FitzGibbon, most notably, Unpitied and Unknown, op. cit.
80
As this article bristles with sensitive controversies, the reader is again directed to my book
(London 2005) as well as to Anita Prazmowska, Civil War in Poland, 1942–1948 (Basingstoke
2004). For information on the Polish personalities involved consult George Sanford, Historical
Dictionary of Poland (Lanham, MD, rev. 2nd edn 2003).
81
For the latter see Robert Szymczak, The Unquiet Dead. The Katyn Forest Massacre as an
Issue in American Diplomacy and Politics (Doctor of Arts Dissertation, Carnegie-Mellon
University 1980. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International no 4012, 1985).
82
Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War. Allied Diplomacy and the World Crisis of
1943–1945 (London 1969), 99–104.
83
Ibid., 104.
84
Ibid., 106.
Criticism of the London Poles for not acquiescing meekly in their historical
defeat, from Katyn through the 1944 Warsaw Uprising to Yalta, however,
reads somewhat differently after the collapse of communism. It also raises
basic questions about the handling by Western governments of the dilemma
between truth and moral principles on the one hand and political expediency
on the other. The case for the Curzon Line and Oder–Neisse frontiers has now
been confirmed by history. But our preceding analysis of the hinge period of
Polish–Soviet relations refutes Kolko’s claim that the significance of the Katyn
affair needs to be downgraded. On the contrary, the truth about the whole
1940 massacre challenges both the morality and political wisdom of British–
American policy regarding the second world war postwar settlement and
passive acquiescence in the Sovietization of Eastern Europe.
George Sanford
is Reader in Politics at the University of Bristol and author of
numerous books on Poland including Democratic Government in
Poland. Constitutional Politics since 1989 (Basingstoke 2002) and
Historical Dictionary of Poland (Metuchen, NJ 2003).
Sanford: The Katyn Massacre and Polish–Soviet Relations, 1941–43
111
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